McCain: Trump’s CIA pick was involved in ‘one of the darkest chapters in American history’

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday condemned President Trump’s decision to nominate Gina Haspel to become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), saying she was involved in “one of darkest chapters in American history.”

While he expressed confidence in current CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s ability to serve as secretary of State, an appointment Trump announced earlier Tuesday, McCain said in a statement that Haspel needs to explain her stance on torture.

“The torture of detainees in U.S. custody during the last decade was one of the darkest chapters in American history,” McCain said. “Ms. Haspel needs to explain the nature and extent of her involvement in the CIA’s interrogation program during the confirmation process.”

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration “squandered precious moral authority” to get intelligence, McCain said.

Haspel joined the CIA in 1985 and faced scrutiny for her role surrounding waterboarding and other interrogation techniques used on detainees at a secret CIA prison in Thailand in 2002.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Haspel was “up to her eyeballs in torture, both in running a secret torture prison in Thailand and carrying out an order to cover up torture crimes by destroying videotapes.”

Progressive foreign policy groups are fighting back against her nomination, saying her direct role in the torture program should “disqualify her” from the position.

Pompeo committed himself to enforcing federal law on interrogation techniques during his confirmation hearing last year to become CIA director.

“Any nominee for director of the CIA must pledge without reservation to uphold this prohibition, which has helped us regain our position of leadership in the struggle for universal human rights,” McCain said Tuesday.

McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner during in the Vietnam War, has sharply criticized Trump’s support of controversial interrogation policies like waterboarding.

“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good,” McCain said in 2014.

Haspel was nominated to the top CIA position Tuesday after Trump announced on Twitter that he was ousting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and tapping Pompeo to take his post. If confirmed, Haspel will be the first woman to hold the position.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... he-darkest




Top Russia probe Republican: It's 'clear' Putin tried to hurt Hillary

The top Republican leading the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian interference said Tuesday that the committee took issue with how the intelligence community reached the conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help President Trump win the election — not the conclusion itself.

The group of intelligence officials who crafted the government’s official assessment of Russian interference in the U.S. election, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) said, did not meet the appropriate standards to make the determination of Putin’s preference.

But, he told reporters, “it was clear [Putin] was trying to hurt Hillary.”

http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... rt-hillary




Tillerson goes farther than White House, condemns Russia for UK nerve agent attack

In a Monday morning call with United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Tillerson discussed the attempted murder of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury, according to a State Department statement.

"We have full confidence in the UK's investigation and its assessment that Russia was likely responsible for the nerve agent attack that took place in Salisbury last week," Tillerson said in the statement.

He continued, "There is never a justification for this type of attack -- the attempted murder of a private citizen on the soil of a sovereign nation -- and we are outraged that Russia appears to have again engaged in such behavior. From Ukraine to Syria -- and now the UK -- Russia continues to be an irresponsible force of instability in the world, acting with open disregard for the sovereignty of other states and the life of their citizens."

[ Rex Tillerson found out he was fired as secretary of State from President Donald Trump's tweet on way home from Africa - Has trump ever fired any of these people face to face ???? ]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/politics ... index.html

<

Maddow expands wall of departures under Trump after Tillerson ouster

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night expanded her running list of departures from the Trump administration to a third column following a series of firings earlier in the day.

“So, today, we have added the secretary of State, the under secretary of State for public diplomacy, the NASA administrator, the head of the forest service and the president’s personal assistant,” she said, motioning to the names listed on the wall behind her.

“We have gone to the big wall and three columns,” she added. “Anybody else going tonight?”

President Trump unexpectedly fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday morning with a tweet that said he would name CIA Director Mike Pompeo as his replacement.

Tillerson's departure then led to the firing of Under Secretary of State Steve Goldstein, who contradicted the White House's account of Tillerson's ouster.

Trump's personal assistant, John McEntee, was also fired after he was reportedly denied a security clearance because of financial problems related to online gambling and tax issues.

Those exits came a week after top economic adviser Gary Cohn resigned over a trade policy dispute.

Late Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times reported that Trump is considering replacing Veterans Affairs chief David Shulkin with Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster has reportedly been on thin ice for some time as well.

http://thehill.com/homenews/media/37828 ... son-firing

<

I hope trump continues to campaign for his candidates.

Yeah! Campaign for your candidate for 5 minutes and talk about yourself the rest of the hour I don't think trump's rhetoric during his campaign rant went over too well in the Pittsburgh area. Never thought I'd say it, but, Pittsburgh, I love y'a man

It didn't appear that tax reform, the economy, or jobs played much of a part in the Dem's win. trump's slandering, degrading, and boasting just doesn't sit well with a lot of folks and Americans are growing bored with it. Grow up! trump's nothing but a playground bully.

trump, fox, and the GOP have a great spin on the win.............Lamb was really a Republican in "sheeps" clothing.

It's going to be a tough row to hoe, but at least there is a glimmer of hope for the Dems. Lamb's win should (hopefully) provide additional momentum for the "wave". trump is bad for America. Some roadblocks have to be put in place, and right now, the best course of action would seem to be the mid terms and the 2020 elections. A better course of action might be Stormy Daniels, maybe Mueller.

trump threw his best at Lamb. Don JR and Ivanka! Pence! And of course, trump himself. Then, there was also the millions of dollars the RNC and Conservative groups pumped into the race. Just couldn't quite pull it off.

No one will admit it, but, in my opinion, this was the trump effect. trump is just a terrible human being, he's a chronic liar, and a hypocrite. trump's personality played a big part in Lamb's win.

After UK slaps penalties on Russia, attention turns to Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — After the brazen poisoning of a former spy, British Prime Minister Theresa May quickly pinned the blame on Russia. So did U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in what ultimately became one of his last public statements before being fired......

https://www.apnews.com/dde4690874dd4741 ... s-to-Trump




Britain boots 23 Russian diplomats over spy poisoning

LONDON (AP) — Relations between Britain and Russia plunged Wednesday to a chilly level not seen since the Cold War as Prime Minister Theresa May expelled 23 diplomats, severed high-level contacts and vowed both open and covert action against Kremlin meddling after the poisoning of a former spy......

https://www.apnews.com/db50f6e2d32b4f74 ... -poisoning




US students stage massive walkout to protest gun violence

They bowed their heads in honor of the dead. They carried signs with messages like “Never again” and “Am I next?” They railed against the National Rifle Association and the politicians who support it. And over and over, they repeated the message: Enough is enough. In a wave of protests one historian called the largest of its kind in American history, tens of thousands of students walked out of their classrooms Wednesday to demand action on gun violence and school safety. The demonstrations extended from Maine to Hawaii as students joined the youth-led surge of activism set off by the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida......

https://www.apnews.com/c183323b5e654641 ... n-violence




Republicans Paralyzed by Pennsylvania Election Stunner

Republicans on Wednesday seemed paralyzed in disagreement over what lessons, if any, they should take from their debilitating special-election loss in a deep-red district in southwestern Pennsylvania......

https://www.thedailybeast.com/republica ... r?ref=home




Democrats leave Capitol to join student gun protest

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate exited the Capitol on Wednesday to march with and speak to students protesting gun violence to mark one month since the Parkland, Fla., school shooting......

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3783 ... un-protest




Puerto Rico inches forward as new hurricane season looms

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Signs of a slow-moving recovery are apparent in Puerto Rico six months after the territory was devastated by back-to-back hurricanes and two months before the next hurricane season begins......

http://thehill.com/latino/378261-puerto ... ason-looms




Pennsylvania Congressional Upset Undercuts GOP Messaging On Tax Law

WASHINGTON ― Early in their efforts to push through tax reform last year, Republicans insisted the legislation was key to maintaining GOP majorities in Congress. Tax cuts, they said, would be popular enough that Americans would vote to keep Republicans in power......

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/go ... 4c0406bb4c




TRADING NATION

It’s the 9th inning of the bull market — and there’s no chance of extra innings, David Rosenberg warns

David Rosenberg Monday on CNBC's "Trading Nation." "We are in basically the ninth inning right now, and it's not going into extra innings. So I say, you don't play the momentum." Rosenberg was concerned investors were taking on a lot more risk than they knew by pouring money into U.S. equities. Fast forward to Feb. 5, when the Dow saw its deepest one-day point plunge ever. Rosenberg believes more pain is coming. He lists several factors supporting another leg lower. They include climbing trade tensions sparked by President Donald Trump's aluminum and steel tariffs, a more hawkish Federal Reserve, a ballooning budget deficit and frothy stock market valuations.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/its-the ... warns.html




After UK slaps penalties on Russia, attention turns to Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — After the brazen poisoning of a former spy, British Prime Minister Theresa May quickly pinned the blame on Russia. So did U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in what ultimately became one of his last public statements before being fired......

https://www.apnews.com/dde4690874dd4741 ... s-to-Trump




Britain boots 23 Russian diplomats over spy poisoning

LONDON (AP) — Relations between Britain and Russia plunged Wednesday to a chilly level not seen since the Cold War as Prime Minister Theresa May expelled 23 diplomats, severed high-level contacts and vowed both open and covert action against Kremlin meddling after the poisoning of a former spy......

https://www.apnews.com/db50f6e2d32b4f74 ... -poisoning




US students stage massive walkout to protest gun violence

They bowed their heads in honor of the dead. They carried signs with messages like “Never again” and “Am I next?” They railed against the National Rifle Association and the politicians who support it. And over and over, they repeated the message: Enough is enough. In a wave of protests one historian called the largest of its kind in American history, tens of thousands of students walked out of their classrooms Wednesday to demand action on gun violence and school safety. The demonstrations extended from Maine to Hawaii as students joined the youth-led surge of activism set off by the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida......

https://www.apnews.com/c183323b5e654641 ... n-violence




Republicans Paralyzed by Pennsylvania Election Stunner

Republicans on Wednesday seemed paralyzed in disagreement over what lessons, if any, they should take from their debilitating special-election loss in a deep-red district in southwestern Pennsylvania......

https://www.thedailybeast.com/republica ... r?ref=home




Democrats leave Capitol to join student gun protest

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate exited the Capitol on Wednesday to march with and speak to students protesting gun violence to mark one month since the Parkland, Fla., school shooting......

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3783 ... un-protest




Puerto Rico inches forward as new hurricane season looms

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Signs of a slow-moving recovery are apparent in Puerto Rico six months after the territory was devastated by back-to-back hurricanes and two months before the next hurricane season begins......

http://thehill.com/latino/378261-puerto ... ason-looms




Pennsylvania Congressional Upset Undercuts GOP Messaging On Tax Law

WASHINGTON ― Early in their efforts to push through tax reform last year, Republicans insisted the legislation was key to maintaining GOP majorities in Congress. Tax cuts, they said, would be popular enough that Americans would vote to keep Republicans in power......

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/go ... 4c0406bb4c




TRADING NATION

It’s the 9th inning of the bull market — and there’s no chance of extra innings, David Rosenberg warns

David Rosenberg Monday on CNBC's "Trading Nation." "We are in basically the ninth inning right now, and it's not going into extra innings. So I say, you don't play the momentum." Rosenberg was concerned investors were taking on a lot more risk than they knew by pouring money into U.S. equities. Fast forward to Feb. 5, when the Dow saw its deepest one-day point plunge ever. Rosenberg believes more pain is coming. He lists several factors supporting another leg lower. They include climbing trade tensions sparked by President Donald Trump's aluminum and steel tariffs, a more hawkish Federal Reserve, a ballooning budget deficit and frothy stock market valuations.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/its-the ... warns.html[/img]





White House says Dem's upset win came from embracing Trump policies

The White House said Wednesday that Democrat Conor Lamb, who appears headed for an upset special election victory in Pennsylvania’s 18th District, won by embracing President Trump’s policies. Trump campaigned for Republican Rick Saccone, who appears headed for a narrow loss in a district that Trump carried by 20 points. “The president’s engagement in the race turned what was a deficit for the Republican candidate to what is essentially a tie,” said White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah. “Also the Democrat in the race really embraced the president’s policies and his vision whereas he didn’t really embrace Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader,” he said.......

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... p-policies




Wednesday's Mini-Report, 3.14.18

House Intelligence Committee: "One day after the GOP announced they had completed a draft report concluding that the Trump campaign had not colluded with Russians in an effort to defeat Hillary Clinton, Democrats issued a 22-page document specifying unresolved issues they said the committee needed to continue exploring -- and that they would attempt to do so even without the GOP's cooperation."

Hmm: "U.S. retail sales fell for a third straight month in February as households cut back on purchases of motor vehicles and other big-ticket items, pointing to a slowdown in economic growth in the first quarter."

Minnesota: "Three men charged Tuesday with illegally possessing a machine gun are suspected of bombing a mosque in Minnesota and attempting to bomb an abortion clinic in Illinois last year, federal officials said."

Everyone realizes how absurd this is, right? "Before House Republicans had even learned the details of a new White House proposal for a three-year renewal of DACA paired with three years of border wall funding, the White House had already walked back the idea."




White House says Dem's upset win came from embracing Trump policies

Conor Lamb

Health care: Lamb criticized the GOP attempt to repeal Obamacare and called for bipartisan efforts to stabilize its markets. "I'll work with anyone from either party who wants to help people with pre-existing conditions, improve the quality of care, and reduce premiums, out-of-pocket costs, and prescription drug prices," he says on his campaign website.

Taxes: He called the GOP tax bill a "giveaway" to wealthy Americans and said he supports cuts for the middle class. "We didn't need to add a penny to our debt to have the tax cut for our working and middle-class people," Lamb said in a debate.

Gun control: He's called for a stronger system of background checks but no new gun restrictions. "I believe we have a pretty good law on the books and it says on paper that there are a lot of people who should never get guns in their hands," Lamb said.

Tariffs: He supports President Donald Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, saying at a debate that "we have to take some action to level the playing field."

Abortion: Lamb personally opposes abortion but backs the Supreme Court's decision legalizing it. "Once you make something a right, it's a right. And it's like that for a reason," he told HuffPost. Lamb told the Weekly Standard he doesn't support a ban on abortion at 20 weeks.

OTHER PRIORITIES:

* Lamb has proposed bolstering Social Security and Medicare, and an infrastructure program to repair failing bridges, locks and dams.

* Lamb has proposed expanded treatment options for addicts, stepping up the war on opioids imported from China and Mexico and making pharmaceutical companies pay for the damage done by the widespread abuse of opioids.




Lamb on Trump’s jabs: ‘There was a lot of foolishness in this election’

Democrat Conor Lamb told CNN early Wednesday that the special congressional election in Pennsylvania was rife with "foolishness" after being shown a clip of President Trump calling him "Lamb the sham" during a campaign rally.

Lamb, who declared victory Tuesday night against GOP state Rep. Rick Saccone even though state election officials say the race is too close to call, told CNN's "New Day" that voters are "tired" of the political games Trump engaged in during a rally for Saccone over the weekend.

"Just apart from that, there was a lot of foolishness in this election and a lot of really cartoonish campaigning, and I think by the time of the president’s visit last weekend, people were kind of tired of that entire approach," Lamb said.

"I had people coming up to me —especially elderly people — coming up to me every day and saying, 'Man, I hate those ads against you. It's not right, it's not worthy of us,'" Lamb added.

"There was just a little bit of burnout on that type of campaigning before the president even got here," he said.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/37 ... s-election




At Pennsylvania rally, Trump endorses himself

The president visited western Pennsylvania to boost a struggling Republican congressional candidate—but made clear to voters that it's all about him.

MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa. —

President Donald Trump got business out of the way quickly Saturday night — urging voters to elect Republican congressional candidate Rick Saccone, who’s locked in an unexpectedly tough special election battle in Pennsylvania — before turning to the main subject of the night: himself.

Returning to top campaign form, Trump made fun of Washington and congratulated himself for maintaining his iconoclastic style in office, despite critics who have called for him to take his job more seriously — including in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal called out by Trump. “I’m very presidential,” he said at one point, lowering his voice and standing artificially straight as he mocked usual political addresses.

“Don’t forget, this got us elected,” he went on, relaxing into his conversational, riffy style. “If I came like a stiff, you guys wouldn’t come here tonight.”

The crowd, in an airplane hangar, cheered. One person shouted: “You're one of us!”

Trump touted his tax reform plan, his new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and his newly announced plan to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, while slamming the news media — including calling NBC host Chuck Todd a “son of a bitch.” The president also talked about his desire to impose capital punishment on drug dealers, describing a discussion with Singapore's president about that country's hard-line approach.

He also talked about the size of the crowd, thanking the fire marshal — a vintage campaign line — and recounted how Pennsylvania sealed his 2016 victory. He also unveiled his own new slogan for the 2020 campaign: “Keep America Great!”

“Is there anything more fun than a Trump rally?” he asked at one point.

By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Trump wrapped up by delivering an appeal to vote for Saccone on behalf of the Trump agenda, saying: “We need Republicans in office.”

“Go out on Tuesday and vote like crazy,” he added. He claimed he'd won the district “by, like, 22 points” — though in reality it was only 20.

“The whole world, remember that, they’re all watching,” Trump concluded. “This is a very important race.”


National and local Republicans hope Trump’s visit will help stoke enthusiasm here in the final days ahead of Tuesday’s special election. The race has drawn millions in outside spending as the GOP tries to avoid a disaster in a race that should have been an easy win — and in which a loss would be widely read as a referendum on the president.

The visit was Trump’s second, after a January appearance with Saccone by his side. Vice President Mike Pence, Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka Trump have all made stops in southwestern Pennsylvania in the past month. Donald Trump Jr. is expected to headline a rally on Monday.

On Saturday, the president openly acknowledged that Saccone has had a “tough race,” adding, “look, it’s a crazy time out there.”

Trump attacked Saccone’s opponent, Democrat Conor Lamb, who he called “Lamb the sham,” for “trying to act like a Republican” but “as soon as he gets in, he’s not going to vote for us.”

“The president's support is key to attaining victory on March 13,” Saccone said in a speech before the president’s arrival. “There’s no one I'd rather have in my corner than President Trump.”

Democrats in the district said they see Trump’s visit as proof that this race “is a referendum” on him, because Trump is “well aware with how well he did in this district,” said Richard Grubb, a 75-year-old Lamb volunteer.

Lamb, campaigning Saturday, said he “doesn’t take anything” from Trump’s visit. “They can’t get between me and the voters,” Lamb said on Saturday afternoon at a canvass launch in Carnegie, Pennsylvania.

Saccone, who’s called himself “Trump before Trump was Trump,” has lagged in fundraising behind Lamb, a former federal prosecutor and Marine veteran.

The pair are running to replace Rep. Tim Murphy, a Republican, anti-abortion rights congressman who resigned amid allegations that he urged his lover to have an abortion.

National Republicans have complained that Saccone’s lackluster fundraising has put the blue-collar district at risk.

“Candidates and campaigns matter, and when one campaign outraises the other by 6 to 1, that creates a number of challenges for outside groups trying to win a race,” said Corry Bliss, executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the flagship super PAC.

Republican outside groups have poured more than $10 million into the district, all in an effort to damage Lamb by tagging him as part of “Pelosi’s liberal flock,” one TV ad says. The Congressional Leadership Fund spent $2.4 million on TV ads, while the National Republican Campaign Committee dropped another $3.1 million. Trump’s super PAC, America First Action, has spent nearly $1 million.

But the onslaught of negative ads hasn’t kept Lamb from narrowing the race. Public polling has put Lamb and Saccone within a few points of each other.

National Democrats, in contrast, have kept their distance. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee aired TV ads in early February, before going dark. And DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján insisted that Lamb is the “strongest voice” for his own candidacy.

Lamb, who’s raised just under $4 million, is largely fueled by small-dollar donors, who have driven fundraising for House candidates across the country. He’s used the cash to air TV ads to remind voters that he won’t support House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi if he’s elected.

“My opponent wants you to believe that the biggest issue in this campaign is Nancy Pelosi. It’s all a big lie,” Lamb says in one ad. “I’ve already said on the front page of the newspaper that I don’t support Nancy Pelosi.”

At the Trump rally, Republican voters said they hope the president’s visit will boost turnout.

“If he can come back in and stir [up] the same people, I don’t see why he wouldn’t be able to do it again,” said Joe Nagel, a 21-year-old Duquesne University student, wearing a “Rick Saccone for Congress” sticker. “[But] it feels close, because Conor Lamb’s running a really grass-roots campaign that appeals to a lot of people.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/ ... eat-454169

<

Trump wildlife protection board stuffed with trophy hunters

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new U.S. advisory board created to help rewrite federal rules for importing the heads and hides of African elephants, lions and rhinos is stacked with trophy hunters, including some members with direct ties to President Donald Trump and his family......

https://www.apnews.com/07c11b7884174e68 ... hy-hunters




Trump owns up to making things up

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has owned up to making things up. For a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump was by his own admission unprepared — deficient in the fundamentals of the Canada-U.S. trade relationship that he’d been railing about since the campaign. He insisted to Trudeau that the U.S. was running a trade deficit with Canada, a statement contradicted by U.S. government statistics. He was winging it, he confided to donors at a private Missouri political fundraiser Wednesday night. “I didn’t even know,” he said. “I had no idea.” Overall, the U.S. Census Bureau reports a U.S. trade surplus of $2.8 billion last year with Canada.

Trump’s impulse to replace fact with fiction has defined him as a politician and as a businessman before that. In office, he routinely misuses numbers — trade statistics among them — and recounts events to suit his agenda even if the facts don’t fit.......

https://www.apnews.com/c5227bc9ad384fa9 ... -things-up




Teens Face ‘Corporal Punishment’ in Rural Arkansas for Participating in Student Walkout

Three kids at Greenbrier Public School in central Arkansas will allegedly be smacked for joining the nationwide student walkout against gun violence.

“My kid and two other students walked out of their rural, very conservative, public school for 17 minutes today,” Greer wrote on Twitter. “They were given two punishment options. They chose corporal punishment. This generation is not playing around.”.....

https://www.thedailybeast.com/teens-fac ... nt-walkout




Vanessa Trump Files for Divorce From Donald Trump Jr.

Vanessa Trump filed for divorce from her husband Donald Trump Jr. in Manhattan Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon. According to Page Six, she filed a uncontested proceeding, most likely meaning that “she’s not expecting a legal battle over custody of the couple’s five children or their assets.” Their marriage reportedly dissolved due to Don Jr.’s travel schedule and controversial Twitter presence. The newspaper reported Wednesday that the couple had been “living separate lives” for sometime before the divorce filing. The couple married in 2005 and have five children.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/vanessa-t ... r?ref=home




Mueller subpoenas Trump Organization for documents related to Russia – report

Reported order is first time special counsel has asked for documents directly related to Trump’s businesses in course of investigation

Trump Organization ‘negotiated with sanctioned Russian bank in 2016’

The special counsel, Robert Mueller, has subpoenaed the Trump Organization to turn over documents, including some related to Russia, the New York Times reported on Thursday, in a sign that the investigation is inching closer to the president. The subpoena was delivered in “recent weeks” and includes an order for the Trump Organization to turn over all documents related to Russia and other topics he is investigating, the Times reported, citing two people briefed on the matter. It is the first known order directly related to Trump’s sprawling business empire......


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... -documents




Pennsylvania school to issue more than 200 detentions to students who took part in walkout

A school in Pennsylvania is planning to give more than 200 students detention for taking part in the nationwide walkouts this week to protest gun violence. About 225 students at Pennridge High School walked out of the school on Wednesday, The Allentown Morning Call reported, citing Superintendent Dr. Jacqueline Rattigan. The students issued detention will serve their punishment on Saturday, according to the publication.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... entions-to




Flake: Never has a party fled beliefs as quickly as GOP under Trump

Sen. Jeff Flake further distanced himself from the administration on Thursday at an event at the National Press Club, saying the Republican party "might not deserve to lead."

"Never has a party abandoned, fled its principles and deeply held beliefs so quickly as my party did in the face of the nativist juggernaut... If we are going to cloister ourselves in the alternative truth of an erratic leader, if we are going to refuse to live in a world that everyone else lives in... then my party might not deserve to lead."

— Flake, at the National Press Club



The Words Trump Refuses to Speak

For the most verbally belligerent president in history, Trump’s comments about Russia’s nerve-agent attack have been conspicuously weak.

It’s as if the nation’s Russia policy is being made by the world’s balkiest teenager. Today, after a week of resistance, President Trump at least delivered something close to a definitive statement about Russian culpability for the March 4 nerve-agent attack on British soil. Asked by ABC’s Jonathan Karl whether he could now accept that Russia was to blame, Trump answered: “It looks like it. I spoke with the prime minister and we are in deep discussions. A very sad situation. Something that should never ever happen, and we are taking it very seriously, as I think are many others.”....

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ck/555734/




Treasury chief Steven Mnuchin opts for pricey military planes, even when predecessors flew cheaper: Watchdog group

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's use of military planes for trips has cost taxpayers almost $1 million, a new report finds.

Mnuchin came under criticism last summer after using a military jet to fly to see Fort Knox in Kentucky with his actress wife, Louise Linton.

Treasury Department Secretary Steven Mnuchin routinely opts for pricey military planes to travel on and eschews using less-expensive commercial aircraft options, a scathing new report says. Mnuchin "never seems to consider flying commercial," said Jordan Libowitz, spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the group that issued the report. "He's always looking for the biggest and best private and military plane," Libowitz said of Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner. CREW's report, which is based on details of Mnuchin's travel obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, says that "between the spring and fall of 2017, Mnuchin took seven separate trips on military aircraft at a total of nearly $1 million.".....

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/15/treasur ... -says.html




The Fix Analysis
A whopper of an alternative fact from Sarah Huckabee Sanders

But whether the United States runs a surplus or deficit with Canada is actually beside the point. The point is that Trump, by his own admission, did not know whether there is a surplus or deficit yet claimed that he did know, in his conversation with Trudeau. Trump was dishonest, plain and simple. The president feigned knowledge he did not possess, saying, “Wrong, Justin, you do” — as if Trump knew what he was talking about — when, in truth, he “had no idea.” For Sanders to deny that Trump “said he was not exactly truthful,” as Decker put it, is brazen even by the standard of this White House.

Sanders, like Trump in a tweet earlier on Thursday, disputed the official government accounting, saying that “they're not taking into account some of the other things, like energy and timber.” The White House's math is bogus. Read the Fact Checker for a full explanation of this four-Pinocchio claim.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fac ... 711ced6f31




Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says

The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will. United States officials and private security firms saw the attacks as a signal by Moscow that it could disrupt the West’s critical facilities in the event of a conflict. They said the strikes accelerated in late 2015, at the same time the Russian interference in the American election was underway. The attackers had successfully compromised some operators in North America and Europe by spring 2017, after President Trump was inaugurated.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/p ... tacks.html




BuzzFeed maneuver could free Stormy Daniels to speak on Trump

BuzzFeed may have found a legal opening to allow the porn actress Stormy Daniels to discuss her alleged relationship with President Donald Trump and a $130,000 payment she received just before the 2016 election as part of a nondisclosure agreement she is now trying to void. The same Trump attorney who brokered the deal with Daniels, Michael Cohen, filed a libel suit in January against BuzzFeed and four of its staffers over publication of the so-called dossier compiling accurate, inaccurate and unproven allegations about Trump’s relationship with Russia. Now, BuzzFeed is using Cohen’s libel suit as a vehicle to demand that Daniels preserve all records relating to her relationship with Trump, as well as her dealings with Cohen and the payment he has acknowledged arranging in 2016.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/ ... ump-462261

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Looking around news this morning.

Consumer confidence at a 14 year high.

Food stamp use is at a 6 year low.

Larry Kudlow, new economic advisor, predicting 4 to 5 % growth. Double that of last decade.

We are all still winning.

Carry on.

GOP confronts another failed tax experiment in Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — When the GOP took full control of Oklahoma government after the 2010 election, lawmakers set out to make it a model of Republican principles, with lower taxes, lighter regulation and a raft of business-friendly reforms.

Conservatives passed all of it, setting in motion a grand experiment. Now it’s time for another big election, but instead of campaigning on eight years of achievements, Republicans are confronting chaos and crisis. Agency budgets that were cut during the Great Recession have been slashed even deeper. Rural hospitals are closing, and teachers are considering a statewide strike over low wages.

“I’m not scared to say it, because I love Oklahoma, and we are dying,” said Republican state Rep. Leslie Osborn. “I truly believe the situation is dire.”

Oklahoma’s woes offer the ultimate cautionary tale for other states considering trickle-down economic reforms. The outlook is so grim that some Republicans are willing to consider the ultimate heresy: raising taxes to fund education and health care, an idea that was once the exclusive province of Democrats.


“Without new recurring revenue, we can’t fix these problems,” said Osborn, who was ousted as chairwoman of the powerful House Appropriations and Budget committee for her outspoken support of tax increases.

The crisis has also placed the oil and gas industry, a sacred cow in Oklahoma, in an awkward spot since it sought the huge tax cut that is one of the biggest factors in the budget mess.......

https://www.apnews.com/f058811fa1fb4bf6 ... n-Oklahoma





Senators want CIA to lift veil on nominee’s black site past

WASHINGTON (AP) — Gina Haspel’s long spy career is so shrouded in mystery that senators want documents declassified so they can decide if her role at a CIA black site should prevent her from directing the agency.

“We should not be asked to confirm a nominee whose background cannot be publicly discussed and who cannot then be held accountable for her actions,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich, who joined other Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee in asking the CIA to declassify more details about Haspel. “The American public deserves to know who its leaders are.”

It’s a deep dive into Haspel’s past that reflects key questions about her future: Would she support President Donald Trump if he tried to reinstate waterboarding and, in his words, “a lot worse”? Is Haspel the right person to lead the CIA at a time of escalating Russian aggression and ongoing extremist threats?

Haspel’s upcoming confirmation hearing will be laser-focused on the time she spent supervising a secret prison in Thailand. The CIA won’t say when in 2002 Haspel was there, but at various times that year interrogators at the site sought to make terror suspects talk by slamming them against walls, keeping them from sleeping, holding them in coffin-sized boxes and forcing water down their throats — a technique called waterboarding.......

https://www.apnews.com/19091da1691f4031 ... -site-past





Hannity and Ingraham Bash Shep Smith After He Calls Them ‘Entertainment’

Two of the network’s biggest primetime stars are now openly feuding with Fox’s consummate newsman, demanding that they too be taken seriously as journalists—despite all evidence.

Despite having previously declared himself “not a journalist,” Sean Hannity on Friday demanded he be taken seriously as a news reporter by his colleagues at Fox News.

In a Tuesday afternoon tweet, the right-wing firebrand criticized his colleague Shepard Smith for describing the Fox News opinion lineup as entertainment rather than informative.

“While Shep is a friend with political views I do not share, and great at breaking news, he is clueless about what we do every day. Hannity breaks news daily-Warrant on a Trump assoc, the unmasking scandal, leaking intel, Fisa abuse, HRC lawbreaking, dossier and more REAL NEWS! 9p,” Hannity wrote on Twitter.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/hannity-a ... t?ref=home





Putin Critic Who Predicted His Own Assassination Was ‘Murdered’ in London

If you thought relations between the United Kingdom and Russia had hit rock bottom after the attempted murder of former Kremlin spy Sergei Skripal on British soil, you may have to think again. On Friday afternoon, London police announced that the death of another Russian exile, Nikolay Glushkov—a vocal Putin critic who was wanted in Russia and previously predicted he would be assassinated—is being treated as murder.

Glushkov was a close friend of exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, suspected by Glushkov to have been murdered on Kremlin orders in 2013.

Glushkov spoke to The Guardian in 2014 about the “hit-list” of Russian exiles such as Berezovsky, his business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili who died in 2008, and former Russian intelilgence officer Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed with radioactive poison in London.

Glushkov voiced his belief that the Kremlin was methodically killing fellow exiles on a hit-list and said gloomily: "I don't see anyone left on it apart from me."

Glushkov was also known for having given evidence against the owner of Chelsea Football Club, Russian oil oligarch Roman Abramovic, who remains on good terms with Putin and the Kremlin, in a 2011 court case.

Police and MI5 are probing allegations of Russian state involvement in up to 14 deaths in the UK in the wake of the nerve agent attack on a former spy.


https://www.thedailybeast.com/nikolay-g ... n?ref=home





Sen. Jeff Flake Not Ruling Out 2020 Presidential Run Against Donald Trump

Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who is retiring from the Senate after his term is up, has not ruled out a 2020 primary run as an independent to stop President Trump. “It has not been in my plans to run for president, but I have not ruled it out,” Flake said Friday in his “first solo political appearance in New Hampshire,” where the first presidential primary of 2020 will take place. “I hope that someone does run in the Republican primary, somebody to challenge the president,” he continued. “I think that the Republicans want to be reminded what it means to be a traditional, decent Republican.”





House Intel Committee Screwed Itself—and the President It’s Trying to Save

In shutting down the Russia probe in such an obviously hackish way, the House Intel Republicans only managed to ensure that if and when Adam Schiff takes over—look out.

Earlier this week, the House Intelligence Committee formally closed its probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, with the Republican majority issuing a report declaring that no collusion occurred between Russia and the Trump campaign. On first glance, this looks like good news for Trump: It’s one less investigation running into his campaign’s alleged Russia ties. It also gave the President some favorable headlines.

But despite all this, the committee ending its probe is actually bad news for Trump long-term. If Democrats retake the House this November—and the odds are they will—Schiff will take over Nunes’ job. Nunes and his colleagues just gave Schiff another huge, fat reason to aggressively investigate the entire topic of Trump and Russia. the House Intelligence Committee probe have pissed off and energized already pissed off and energized Democrats, who will be responding to, and benefiting from, an even more pissed off and energized base if they succeed in winning.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/house-int ... e?ref=home





Democrats May Seek Prosecution of Witnesses Who Misled House Intelligence Committee

Erik Prince, Carter Page, and Roger Stone are among their top targets.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are reviewing transcripts of interviews conducted during the panel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and plan to refer any witnesses who lied to the panel to the Justice Department for prosecution.

“We’re gonna be going through the transcripts and analyzing them for any concerns we have with the greater body of information we have,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) tells Mother Jones. “We’ll discuss it with the majority and ask whether they’ll join us in a referral, or, if we think one is warranted, then we reserve the right to make a referral even if they don’t.”

According to a source close to the committee, Democrats firmed up their plans to pursue criminal referrals this past week after their Republican colleagues abruptly announced they were ending the panel’s investigation. Democrats would send the referrals to the Justice Department and potentially directly to special counsel Robert Mueller.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... committee/





Ryan Zinke spent his first year in office selling off rights to our public lands

The Interior secretary is taking extraordinary steps to put public lands in private hands.

From his recent proposal to open almost all of America’s coast to offshore drilling to rolling back federal protections on national monuments, Zinke has taken extraordinary steps to make public lands more accessible to fossil fuel companies and other industries. Part of what he’s doing is selling mineral and energy rights to our public lands through leases — and potentially lowering royalties for industries in the process. In line with Trump’s interest in expanding mining on federal lands, Zinke has made critical mineral production a top priority.

“When Zinke was nominated, he told the American people that he was a conservationist in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, and he was committed to stewarding our public lands, and he was concerned about issues like global warming,” says Jay Turner, an environmental historian at Wellesley College. “In practice, Zinke has aggressively worked to open up our public lands and natural resources to development by private interests and aggressively rolled back regulations meant to protect those resources and address issues like climate change.”

[ That's what these people do.... They lie ]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... -secretary




Republicans Got Greedy With Gerrymandering. Now It’s Coming Back To Haunt Them.

But in 2011, Republicans were focused on maximizing every possible advantage they could squeeze out of the redistricting project, and saw an opportunity to entrench their control of at least 20 seats in the U.S. House. They took it.

Republicans have since enjoyed considerable advantage from those maps. According to an estimate by the Brennan Center for Justice, Republican gerrymandering accounts for 16 or 17 GOP seats in the current Congress that the party may not otherwise control.

But now, that gerrymandering greed of Republicans is coming back to haunt them.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in January struck down the congressional map state Republicans drew, saying it was so partisan that it violated the state constitution. That same month, a panel of three federal judges struck down North Carolina’s congressional map. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argument in a Wisconsin case may set a standard for defining unconstitutional gerrymandering on partisan grounds. (The court also will consider a case challenging a Democratic gerrymander in Maryland at the end of March.)

Both Democrats and Republicans have gerrymandered in the past to their advantage, but Republicans took it to a new level in 2011. In an amicus brief to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, political science professors Keith Gaddie and Bernard Grofman wrote that there was as much as three times more partisan bias in congressional maps this decade than in ones drawn in 2000. Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at the University of Chicago helping challenge a Wisconsin map, said a “dramatic number” of the worst gerrymanders of the last half-century have occurred since 2010......

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/go ... 3361afccc7




Top State Department Aide Fired after Contradicting White House Account of Tillerson Ouster

[ Truth will not be tolerated by this white house ]

An undersecretary of state was fired today for saying that Tillerson learned of his dismissal over Twitter.

Two U.S. officials told the Associated Press that Steve Goldstein, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, was dismissed after he penned a statement that contradicted the official account of why the secretary of state was fired.

Goldstein claimed Tillerson was “unaware of the reason” he was ousted by Trump and said the former secretary of state only became aware of the news through Trump’s tweet announcing former CIA director Mike Pompeo as Trump’s pick to replace him.

“The Secretary had every intention of staying, because of critical progress made in national security….The Secretary did not speak to the president and is unaware of the reason,” Goldstein wrote.

However, a senior administration official told the AP that Trump had asked Tillerson to resign last Friday, while another official said that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called Tillerson on Friday and again on Saturday to “warn” him his firing was “imminent.”

President Trump corroborated the White House’s account, saying that, “Rex and I have been talking about this a long time.”

[ Note that Tillerson was fired just after having denounced Putin and Russia over the nerve gas attack in the UK with the harshest criticism from the white house to date. ]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/ ... ite-house/

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Trump legal team moves to shift Stormy Daniels case to federal court

President Trump's legal team on Friday filed paperwork to move the lawsuit filed against him by adult film star Stormy Daniels to federal court. [ To the Federal Courts Where trump has appointed judges ]

Bloomberg reported the motion to transfer the lawsuit from California state court to a federal court in Los Angeles was made by Essential Consultants LLC, the company set up by Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, signed a nondisclosure agreement with the entity in 2016. As part of the agreement, she was paid $130,000 reportedly to stay quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.

Trump will support the case’s transfer, according to the Essential Consultants filing cited by Bloomberg.

Clifford's lawyer Michael Avenatti slammed the court filing in a tweet Friday, calling it "yet another bullying tactic from the president and Mr. Cohen."

"They are now attempting to remove this case to federal [court] in order to increase their chances that the matter will be decided in private arbitration, thus hiding the truth from the public," Avenatti wrote.

The documents from Trump's legal team state that Clifford could face up to $20 million in damages if she violates the nondisclosure agreement.

Cohen claims in the documents filed Friday that Clifford violated the agreement 20 times, according to The Washington Post, which reported that Cohen is seeking to force the legal dispute back into private arbitration.

The documents filed Friday also reveal that Trump is being represented in the case by Los Angeles-based attorney Charles Harder.

Harder, who has worked as an attorney for Trump and first lady Melania Trump, previously served as the lead attorney for Hulk Hogan when the former wrestler won a $140 million judgement against the website Gawker over a leaked sex tape, forcing the company into bankruptcy. Hogan and Gawker later reached a $31 million cash settlement.

Clifford is suing Trump to void the nondisclosure agreement in an effort to publicly discuss what she claims to be a relationship she had with Trump in 2006. Clifford has claimed the nondisclosure agreement is invalid because Trump didn’t sign the document.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... eral-court

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Sessions fires former FBI deputy director McCabe

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Friday, dismissing the longtime bureau veteran who became a frequent target of criticism from President Donald Trump just days before he was set to retire Sunday.

In a statement, Sessions said that the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility reviewed an inspector general's report about McCabe "and underlying documents and issued a disciplinary proposal recommending the dismissal of Mr. McCabe."

"Both the OIG and FBI OPR reports concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions. The FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and accountability."

The embattled FBI deputy, who was due to officially retire on Sunday, had stepped down in January after facing repeated public and private rebukes from the president. Trump criticized his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and accused McCabe of bias, citing his wife’s political ties to a prominent Democrat.

McCabe has been at the center of an ongoing inspector general examination of the bureau’s activities prior to the 2016 election, including the Clinton email matter. The FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility had recommended that McCabe be fired, a source told POLITICO on Wednesday, citing findings from the Justice Department’s inspector general’s report, which has yet to be released.

The precise allegations against McCabe have been unclear, but he has been accused of a lack of candor during a review by the inspector general into decisions made at the FBI before the 2016 election.

McCabe has pushed back at the timing of the inspector general’s report, suggesting that Trump’s frequent criticism of him has driven the speed with which the investigation concluded with a recommendation to terminate him.

“The fact that [Trump] has said all these things about me, he’s made all these attacks, he’s gone on and on — you can’t dismiss it, that’s the problem,” McCabe told POLITICO in an interview earlier this month. “That’s why presidents don’t typically attack senior executives in the FBI, because they would never even want to create the impression that that sort of improper influence could be taking place.”

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on the status of McCabe’s case on Wednesday, but said the department would follow internal protocols on disciplinary action.

“The department follows a prescribed process by which an employee may be terminated,” the spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, said in a statement. “That process includes recommendations from career employees, and no termination decision is final until the conclusion of that process. We have no personnel announcements at this time.”

After stepping down in January, McCabe went on “terminal leave,” remaining on the payroll until his planned retirement on March 18. The firing could render McCabe ineligible for his full government pension. Legal experts say McCabe’s options to challenge the firing are few because most FBI employees have little legal recourse against attempts to punish them over alleged misconduct.

[ After 21 years of dedicated service - injustice has been served ]

McCabe said earlier this month that he was “essentially removed from my job”

in January following information “shared with” Christopher Wray, the FBI’s current director, “before the investigation was concluded.”

“I refused to serve in any other capacity other than deputy, and so I left on terminal leave,” McCabe said. Trump announced in June that he would nominate Wray to replace Comey. Wray took over the job in August, after being confirmed by the Senate.

Trump had questioned McCabe’s impartiality, citing the fact that his wife received funds from then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat and longtime political ally of Clinton, in a failed bid for the State Legislature in 2015.

“How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?” Trump tweeted in December. Trump abruptly fired Comey as FBI director in May, saying he was “unable to effectively lead the Bureau.”

In a separate post, Trump added that McCabe was “racing the clock to retire with full benefits.”

Last summer, Trump questioned why Sessions had not already replaced McCabe, whom he labeled a “friend” of Comey’s.

The firing raised concerns about the integrity of the FBI’s examination of possible Russian election meddling in 2016 and potential ties to Trump campaign aides, an investigation that McCabe subsequently took charge of as acting director of the bureau.

McCabe began his bureau career at the New York field office in 1996. In January 2016, under former President Barack Obama, he was appointed to the bureau’s No. 2 position by Comey.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/ ... ons-468681

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Jeff Sessions Fires The Former No. 2 At The FBI Two Days Before His Scheduled Retirement

Full Statement From Andrew McCabe:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/j ... .kkZ1MV2jA

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McCabe’s Firing Chips Away at the Justice Department’s Independence

On Twitter, Trump repeatedly singled out McCabe, writing in December 2017, for example, that “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!”

Privately, Trump reportedly asked McCabe to “ask his wife how it feels to be a loser,” in reference to her earlier campaign. He also reportedly asked McCabe who he voted for in the 2016 election. (According to a CNN report, McCabe voted in the 2016 Republican primary in Virginia, but not the general election.......)

[ THE REAL REASON(S) WHY "TRUMP" FIRED McCABE ! TRUMP IS THE LOSER ! ]

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... bi/555857/




Andrew McCabe, The Fired Former No. 2 At The FBI, Wrote Memos About His Interactions With Trump

McCabe, fired on Friday night by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, kept personal memos detailing his interactions with Trump, as well as what happened during the time period when the president fired former FBI director James Comey.

Andrew McCabe, the fired former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, kept personal memos detailing his interactions with President Donald Trump, as well as what happened during the time period when the president fired former FBI director James Comey, a source familiar with the situation told BuzzFeed News.

McCabe no longer has the memos, the source noted, detailing that they are the same kind of memos that were kept by Comey. It was not immediately clear who currently has possession of the memos or whether they or copies had been requested by or turned over to the Special Counsel's Office.

The Associated Press first reported the existence of the McCabe memos on Saturday afternoon, following Attorney General Jeff Sessions decision on Friday night to fire McCabe due what he wrote was an "unauthorized disclosure" to the media and a lack of candor with investigators.

The Comey memos have been the subject of litigation to try to have them released to the public and were a key reference point in Comey's Hill testimony in June 2017.

Comey said outright that he made the detailed memos because he was afraid Trump would "lie" about their private conversations.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/a ... .xhgnGx82l





Trump Lawyer Call to End Mueller Probe Tramples Vow to Cooperate

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer called for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to end, hours after the former FBI deputy director was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The statement was a dramatic shift from the Trump legal team’s previous commitment to fully cooperate with Mueller. Trump’s lawyers have asserted in the past -- and Trump said again on Saturday -- that the president’s campaign didn’t collude with the Russian government, and predicted that the probe would be complete by now. Democrats warned the president against trying to shut down the probe.

“Just end it on the merits in light of recent revelations,’’ Trump attorney John Dowd said in an emailed statement on Saturday.

I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd wrote.

.........

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -to-retire





Fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Lawyers Up

McCabe has retained the ex-inspector general of the Justice department to represent him.

Andrew McCabe, formerly the deputy director of the FBI, has lawyered up. Michael Bromwich of the Bromwich Group confirmed to The Daily Beast that he is representing McCabe for the purposes of the matter that led to his firing.

Last night, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he was firing McCabe, citing “lack of candor”—a fireable offense in the FBI. McCabe immediately fired back; in a lengthy statement, he said he believed he was actually fired because of his connection to Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s investigation.

“This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally,” McCabe said in a statement. “It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day.”

The Washington Post previously reported the news of Bromwich hire. Bromwich, who has been representing McCabe for several weeks, was formerly the inspector general of the Justice Department.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fired-fbi ... ref=scroll





Warner calls on Congress to protect Mueller after McCabe’s firing

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said on Saturday that all members of Congress need to defend special counsel Robert Mueller, after a report suggested that President Trump’s lawyer wanted Mueller to be fired.

“Every member of Congress, Republican and Democrat, needs to speak up in defense of the Special Counsel. Now,” Warner wrote in a tweet.

Mark Warner
@MarkWarner
Every member of Congress, Republican and Democrat, needs to speak up in defense of the Special Counsel. Now. https://twitter.com/woodruffbets/status ... 6805898240 …

9:52 AM - Mar 17, 2018
25.6K
12.4K people are talking about this

Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, told the Daily Beast that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should end special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

“I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss [former FBI Director] James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd told The Daily Beast in a statement, referring to the "Steele dossier" that Republicans say prompted the ongoing Russia investigation.

[ GOTTA LOVE IT ! MUELLER GETTING CLOSER ! TRUMP NEEDS A CLEAN PAIR OF SHORTS ]

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... s-needs-to





Ex-CIA director slams Trump after McCabe firing:

You'll be remembered as a 'disgraced demagogue'

Former CIA Director John Brennan tore into President Trump for celebrating the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, saying Trump will be remembered as “a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history.”

“You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you,” Brennan tweeted at Trump.

John O. Brennan
@JohnBrennan
When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/sta ... 1827258369 …

7:00 AM - Mar 17, 2018
134K
72.2K people are talking about this

The former CIA director was responding to a tweet by Trump hailing McCabe’s firing as a "great day for democracy."

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!

11:08 PM - Mar 16, 2018
129K
126K people are talking about this

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... remembered





5 claims McCabe made after being fired

Andrew McCabe, the former No. 2 official at the FBI, made a series of comments to the press following his ouster on Friday night in which he commented on claims made about his performance and duties at the FBI.

Here are five of McCabe’s most remarkable claims:

Firing an attempt to undermine Mueller probe

McCabe said that during the time he spent as acting director at the FBI, after President Trump fired former Director James Comey, he pushed for Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel to take over the investigation into Russia's election interference.

“I didn’t want anyone to be able to just walk away from the work that we had done,” he told Politico.

But the former deputy director says that Mueller’s ongoing investigation is being targeted by President Trump and that his own firing is further evidence that the administration is seeking to undermine it.

“This is part of an effort to discredit me as a witness,” McCabe told The New York Times.

McCabe told ABC News he “witnessed significant events” during his time at the FBI “so a concentrated effort to consistently undermine my credibility and my reputation makes perfect sense if you are trying to undermine the efforts of the special counsel and discredit the entire FBI.”

Denies leaking to media

One of the accusations against McCabe is that he “made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media,” according to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. That charge comes from an internal FBI investigation that Sessions cited in firing McCabe on Friday night.

McCabe said in a statement that he had the authority to share information with the media.

“It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter,” he said. “It was the type of exchange with the media that the deputy director oversees several times per week. In fact, it was the same type of work that I continued to do under Director Wray, at his request.”

He told ABC, “the fact is this is not a leak.”

The inspector general report, which has not yet been released, reportedly found that, in 2016, McCabe allowed FBI officials to speak with The Wall Street Journal about how the agency handled the probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of State.

McCabe told ABC that he made the decision to supply information to reporters in order to counter a narrative that the FBI was not pursuing the Clinton investigation aggressively.

In order to get the reporter "off [the] narrative," McCabe authorized the release of “the content of a conversation that I had had with [a senior official] from the Department of Justice” about the investigation.

Neither Comey nor current FBI Director Christopher Wray has weighed in on these claims, but Comey has been supportive of McCabe, saying after news emerged in January that McCabe would step down that he had “served with distinction.”

Accuses Republicans of misquoting testimony

What McCabe did or did not say during a closed-door congressional hearing has been a key source of controversy between Republicans and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee — and now McCabe is weighing in.

McCabe sided with the Democrats’ version of his testimony, which was recounted in a memo that House Intelligence Democrats released in February to counter one released by Republicans on the panel a few weeks prior.

Republicans insisted that McCabe testified to the committee that unverified material supplied by the so-called Steele dossier was integral to the FBI securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, arguing that helped prompt the ongoing federal probe into Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 election.

Democrats said McCabe did not claim the FISA application depended on the dossier, which McCabe now corroborates.

"We started the investigations without the dossier. We were proceeding with the investigations before we ever received that information," McCabe told CNN. "Was the dossier material important to the package? Of course, it was. As was every fact included in that package. Was it the majority of what was in the package? Absolutely not."

McCabe’s comments could be key to the Democrats’ ongoing attempt to shore up the FBI’s Russia probe.

Says Trump asked whom he voted for, called wife a ‘loser’

McCabe said the president did ask him whether he voted for Trump in 2016, contradicting Trump's previous denials of past news reports.

McCabe, who told ABC he “voted for every Republican candidate for president in every election” previously, said he did not vote in 2016.

But he said his decision not to vote was not motivated by Trump's candidacy or by his wife running as a Democrat in Virginia.

McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, received political donations from then-Virginia governor and Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe (D) during her bid for state office in 2015, which has been an ongoing source of conflict between McCabe and Trump.

"In May, when Director Comey was fired and I had my own interactions with the president, he brought up my wife every time I ever spoke to him," McCabe told CNN. He recounted four occasions in which he said Trump called his wife’s campaign a “mistake” or "problem" and called his wife a "loser.”

The alleged “loser” comment was previously reported by NBC News and denied as “pure fiction” by the White House.

"Of course, I disagreed with [Trump],” McCabe told CNN. “I don't see my wife's decision to try to enter public life to help her community [have] greater access to health care as a mistake or a problem."

Trump in January denied asking McCabe whom he had voted for, although he also said he didn’t consider such a question “a big deal.”

McCabe has said his wife’s unsuccessful campaign happened well before he took charge of the FBI’s investigation into Clinton. However, he did eventually recuse himself from the investigation days before the presidential election.

Argues Trump is to blame

McCabe went after Trump explicitly in the statement he released following his firing, further escalating the bad blood between Trump and former FBI leaders.

"The [Office of the Inspector General's] focus on me and this report became a part of an unprecedented effort by the Administration, driven by the President himself, to remove me from my position, destroy my reputation, and possibly strip me of a pension that I worked 21 years to earn," he said. “For the last year and a half, my family and I have been the targets of an unrelenting assault on our reputation and my service to this country. Articles too numerous to count have leveled every sort of false, defamatory and degrading allegation against us. The President's tweets have amplified and exacerbated it all.”

The full allegations against McCabe — beyond the alleged leak and a “lack of candor” — are not known, because the inspector general's report is not yet public. McCabe’s decision to step down in January, and his subsequent firing Friday, just two days before he was set to officially retire, were apparently both prompted by findings in the report, which is the result of a yearlong investigation and expected to be released later this spring.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday said the decision whether or not to fire McCabe would be made by Sessions, but added that he “has had some very troubling behavior and [is] by most accounts a bad actor.”

Those comments follow months of criticism directed at McCabe by Trump.

McCabe’s official retirement was planned for Sunday, when he would be eligible to receive his full pension benefits. McCabe’s firing on Friday puts his pension into doubt.

Some observers expect McCabe to seek legal action — even potentially filing a lawsuit — against the administration.

“McCabe will win his appeal,” predicted Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.).

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/378920 ... eing-fired




Mueller has McCabe memos documenting conversations with Trump

Washington (CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller has memos written by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe documenting his conversations with President Donald Trump, a source with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

The memos also detail what former FBI Director James Comey told McCabe about his own interactions with Trump while he was FBI director and are seen as a way to corroborate Comey's account in Mueller's probe on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe on Friday, about a day before his 50th birthday and the date he was set to retire and begin receiving his anticipated pension, over accusations that McCabe directed FBI officials to speak to the media about an investigation tied to the Clinton Foundation and misled investigators about his actions. Following his firing Friday, McCabe told CNN in an interview that he had four interactions with the President last May, while he was acting FBI director.

McCabe revealed that he had three in-person interactions and one phone call with Trump, in which the President berated him each time about his wife's failed Virginia Senate campaign.
It is unclear exactly what is in McCabe's memos and if he memorialized every interaction he had with the President.
"In May, when Director Comey was fired and I had my own interactions with the President, he brought up my wife every time I ever spoke to him," McCabe told CNN. "Of course, I disagreed with him."

McCabe also confirmed that the President asked him who he voted for in the 2016 election, which was reported back in January and which Trump denied.
The former No. 2 official at the FBI told CNN that Trump did not bring up the agency's investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 election.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/17/politics ... index.html

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Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

Whistleblower describes how firm linked to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon compiled user data to target American voters

• How Cambridge Analytica’s algorithms turned ‘likes’ into a political tool

The British data firm described as “pivotal” in Donald Trump's presidential victory was behind a 'data grab' of more than 50 million Facebook profiles, a whistleblower has revealed...

VIDEO

https://youtu.be/zb6-xz-geH4







The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box.

A whistleblower has revealed to the Observer how Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used personal information taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalised political advertisements.

Christopher Wylie, who worked with a Cambridge University academic to obtain the data, told the Observer: “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”

Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals.
The New York Times is reporting that copies of the data harvested for Cambridge Analytica could still be found online; its reporting team had viewed some of the raw data.

The data was collected through an app called thisisyourdigitallife, built by academic Aleksandr Kogan, separately from his work at Cambridge University. Through his company Global Science Research (GSR), in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica, hundreds of thousands of users were paid to take a personality test and agreed to have their data collected for academic use.

However, the app also collected the information of the test-takers’ Facebook friends, leading to the accumulation of a data pool tens of millions-strong. Facebook’s “platform policy” allowed only collection of friends’ data to improve user experience in the app and barred it being sold on or used for advertising.

The discovery of the unprecedented data harvesting, and the use to which it was put, raises urgent new questions about Facebook’s role in targeting voters in the US presidential election. It comes only weeks after indictments of 13 Russians by special counsel Robert Mueller which stated they had used the platform to perpetrate “information warfare” against the US.

Cambridge Analytica and Facebook are one focus of an inquiry into data and politics by the British Information Commissioner’s Office. Separately, the Electoral Commission is also investigating what role Cambridge Analytica played in the EU referendum.

“We are investigating the circumstances in which Facebook data may have been illegally acquired and used,” said information commissioner Elizabeth Denham. “It’s part of our ongoing investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes which was launched to consider how political parties and campaigns, data analytics companies and social media platforms in the UK are using and analysing people’s personal information to micro-target voters.”

On Friday, four days after the Observer sought comment for this story, but more than two years after the data breach was first reported, Facebook announced that it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and Kogan from the platform, pending further information over misuse of data. Separately, Facebook’s external lawyers warned the Observer on Friday it was making “false and defamatory” allegations, and reserved Facebook’s legal position.
Last month both Facebook and the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, told a parliamentary inquiry on fake news: that the company did not have or use private Facebook data.

Simon Milner, Facebook’s UK policy director, when asked if Cambridge Analytica had Facebook data, told MPs: “They may have lots of data but it will not be Facebook user data. It may be data about people who are on Facebook that they have gathered themselves, but it is not data that we have provided.”

Cambridge Analytica’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, told the inquiry: “We do not work with Facebook data and we do not have Facebook data.”

Wylie, a Canadian data analytics expert, who worked with Cambridge Analytica and Kogan to devise and implement the scheme, showed a dossier of evidence about the data misuse to the Observer which appears to raise questions about their testimony. He has passed it to the National Crime Agency’s cybercrime unit and the Information Commissioner’s Office. It includes emails, invoices, contracts and bank transfers that reveal more than 50 million profiles – mostly belonging to registered US voters – were harvested from the site in one of the largest ever breaches of Facebook data.

Facebook on Friday said that it was also suspending Wylie from accessing the platform while it carried out its investigation, despite his role as a whistleblower.

At the time of the data breach, Wylie was a Cambridge Analytica employee, but Facebook described him as working for Eunoia Technologies, a firm he set up on his own after leaving his former employer in late 2014.

The evidence Wylie supplied to UK and US authorities includes a letter from Facebook’s own lawyers sent to him in August 2016, asking him to destroy any data he held that had been collected by GSR, the company set up by Kogan to harvest the profiles.

That legal letter was sent several months after the Guardian first reported the breach and days before it was officially announced that Bannon was taking over as campaign manager for Trump and bringing Cambridge Analytica with him.

“Because this data was obtained and used without permission, and because GSR was not authorised to share or sell it to you, it cannot be used legitimately in the future and must be deleted immediately,” the letter said.

Facebook did not pursue a response when the letter initially went unanswered for weeks because Wylie was travelling, nor did it follow up with forensic checks on his computers or storage, he said. “That to me was the most astonishing thing. They waited two years and did absolutely nothing to check that the data was deleted. All they asked me to do was tick a box on a form and post it back.”

Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a data protection specialist, who spearheaded the investigative efforts into the tech giant, said: “Facebook has denied and denied and denied this. It has misled MPs and congressional investigators and it’s failed in its duties to respect the law.

“It has a legal obligation to inform regulators and individuals about this data breach, and it hasn’t. It’s failed time and time again to be open and transparent.”

A majority of American states have laws requiring notification in some cases of data breach, including California, where Facebook is based.

Facebook denies that the harvesting of tens of millions of profiles by GSR and Cambridge Analytica was a data breach. It said in a statement that Kogan “gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels” but “did not subsequently abide by our rules” because he passed the information on to third parties.

Facebook said it removed the app in 2015 and required certification from everyone with copies that the data had been destroyed, although the letter to Wylie did not arrive until the second half of 2016. “We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people’s information. We will take whatever steps are required to see that this happens,” Paul Grewal, Facebook’s vice-president, said in a statement. The company is now investigating reports that not all data had been deleted.

Kogan, who has previously unreported links to a Russian university and took Russian grants for research, had a licence from Facebook to collect profile data, but it was for research purposes only. So when he hoovered up information for the commercial venture, he was violating the company’s terms. Kogan maintains everything he did was legal, and says he had a “close working relationship” with Facebook, which had granted him permission for his apps.

The Observer has seen a contract dated 4 June 2014, which confirms SCL, an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica, entered into a commercial arrangement with GSR, entirely premised on harvesting and processing of Facebook data.

Cambridge Analytica spent nearly $1m on data collection, which yielded more than 50 million individual profiles that could be matched to electoral rolls. It then used the test results and Facebook data to build an algorithm that could analyse individual Facebook profiles and determine personality traits linked to voting behaviour.

Cambridge Analytica: how the key players are linked - SEE URL LINK FOR CHART

The algorithm and database together made a powerful political tool. It allowed a campaign to identify possible swing voters and craft messages more likely to resonate.

“The ultimate product of the training set is creating a ‘gold standard’ of understanding personality from Facebook profile information,” the contract specifies. It promises to create a database of 2 million “matched” profiles, identifiable and tied to electoral registers, across 11 states, but with room to expand much further.

At the time, more than 50 million profiles represented around a third of active North American Facebook users, and nearly a quarter of potential US voters. Yet when asked by MPs if any of his firm’s data had come from GSR, Nix said: “We had a relationship with GSR. They did some research for us back in 2014. That research proved to be fruitless and so the answer is no.”

Cambridge Analytica said that its contract with GSR stipulated that Kogan should seek informed consent for data collection and it had no reason to believe he would not.

GSR was “led by a seemingly reputable academic at an internationally renowned institution who made explicit contractual commitments to us regarding its legal authority to license data to SCL Elections”, a company spokesman said.

SCL Elections, an affiliate, worked with Facebook over the period to ensure it was satisfied no terms had been “knowingly breached” and provided a signed statement that all data and derivatives had been deleted, he said. Cambridge Analytica also said none of the data was used in the 2016 presidential election.

Steve Bannon’s lawyer said he had no comment because his client “knows nothing about the claims being asserted”. He added: “The first Mr Bannon heard of these reports was from media inquiries in the past few days.” He directed inquires to Nix.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/m ... s-election






Cambridge Analytica used data from Facebook and Politico to help Trump

Speech by company executive contradicts denial by Trump campaign that claimed the company used its own data and Facebook data to help the campaign

Cambridge Analytica used its own database and voter information collected from Facebook and news publishers in its effort to help elect Donald Trump, despite a claim by a top campaign official who has downplayed the company’s role in the election.

Did Cambridge Analytica influence the Brexit vote and the US election?

The data analysis company, which uses a massive database of consumer and demographic information to profile and target voters, has come under the scrutiny of congressional investigators who are examining the Trump campaign.

This week, the group became the focus of a new controversy after the Daily Beast reported that the company’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, had contacted Julian Assange last year. Nix allegedly asked the WikiLeaks founder whether he could assist in releasing thousands of emails that had gone missing on a private server that had been used by Hillary Clinton. Assange confirmed the contact but said the offer was rejected.

The news prompted a top former campaign official, Michael Glassner, who was executive director of the Trump election campaign, to minimise the role Cambridge Analytica played in electing Trump, despite the fact that it paid Cambridge Analytica millions of dollars in fees.

In a statement on Wednesday, Glassner said that the Trump campaign relied on voter data owned by the Republican National Committee to help elect the president.

“Any claims that voter data from any other source played a key role in the victory are false,” he said.

But that claim is contradicted by a detailed description of the company’s role in the 2016 election given in May by a senior Cambridge Analytica executive.

Speaking at a conference in Germany, Molly Schweickert, the head of digital at Cambridge Analytica, said that Cambridge Analytica models, which melded the company’s own massive database and new voter surveys, were instrumental in day-to-day campaign decisions, including in helping determine Trump’s travel schedule.

The company’s models also helped drive decisions on advertising and how to reach out to financial donors.

Schweickert said Cambridge Analytica started working with the Trump campaign in June 2016.

“It became obvious that a sophisticated data apparatus would be needed to combat the years of infrastructure and experience the Clinton campaign had been building up,” she said.

One of the company’s strategies was to work in “collaboration” with news publishers like Politico, the political news website, which Schweickert said helped the company target a political ad about the Clinton Foundation to readers in key battleground states.

“We knew we would be showing this to the right individuals,” Schweickert said.

In another case, in the late stages of the November election, Schweickert said the company acquired data on voters who voted early – data it collected from local counties and states – and linked the information to individual Facebook profiles.

This helped Cambridge Analytica determine whether people had been exposed to certain political advertisements, and whether those people had turned in their early voting ballots, helping them to predict the outcome of the election.

When asked by a German audience member whether this was legal, given privacy rules in Europe that would “probably” make the activity illegal in Germany, Schweickert responded: “It’s a very different sort of data privacy culture.”

“All the data we work with is already publicly available,” she said.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... help-trump

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Putin Easily Wins Another Six-Year Term in the Kremlin

Russian President Vladimir Putin won a landslide re-election victory on Sunday, extending his rule over the world's largest country for another six years at a time when his ties with the West are on a hostile trajectory. Putin's thumping victory will extend his total time in office to nearly a quarter of a century, until 2024, by which time he will be 71. Only Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ruled for longer. Putin has promised to use his new term to beef up Russia's defences against the West and to raise living standards. In a widely-expected result, an exit poll by pollster VTsIOM showed Putin, who has already dominated the political landscape for the last 18 years, had won 73.9 percent of the vote. Backed by state TV, the ruling party, and credited with an approval rating around 80 percent, his victory was never in doubt. None of the seven candidates who ran against him posed a threat, and opposition leader Alexei Navalny was barred from running.......

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/putin-w ... poll-60856





In Russian Elections, Some People Say They Were Ordered to Vote

Opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged that voters in Sunday's presidential election were being compelled to show up at polling stations in a Kremlin drive to ensure Putin's likely win is not tarnished by a low turnout. Ivan Zhdanov, an aide to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is barred from running in the race, said Navalny supporters monitoring the vote reported people being bussed to polling stations by their employers. "We would call this the 'shuttle bus election'," Zhdanov told a briefing. "Some organisations, some buses, are bringing massive amounts of people."......

https://themoscowtimes.com/news/in-russ ... vote-60853




Russia’s Interior Ministry says cyber attack against vote counting system thwarted

MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/. Russia’s state automated vote counting and electoral information system (GAS Vybory) has weathered some cyber attacks, First Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Gorovoy informed TASS on Sunday. Chairperson Ella Pamfilova earlier said the CEC’s website had been subjected to a DDoS attack from IP addresses in 15 countries. For her part, the commission’s Secretary Maya Grishina said that the CEC had registered a cyber attack not only on its website but also at its Information Center. Later on, CEC Deputy Chairman Nikolai Bulaev guaranteed that Russia’s entire electoral system was working without any glitches despite the cyber attack.......

http://tass.com/politics/994809





Democrats Flood Andrew McCabe With Federal Job Offers To Save His Pension

The former FBI deputy director was fired two days before he was set to retire with his pension.

Democrats in Congress may have found a way to save former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s government pension, despite Attorney General Jeff Sessions firing him two days before he could qualify for it. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) on Saturday extended a federal job offer to McCabe, who has worked for the FBI for 21 years. Pocan wants McCabe to work with his office on election security. Should McCabe accept the offer, Pocan said in a statement it would allow the former FBI official to reach the length of service he needs to retire and collect his pension, estimated at $60,000 a year. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) offered McCabe a position in his office as special senior staff attorney assisting the House Judiciary Committee, while Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) told McCabe to call him on Monday for a federal job. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) also told the Boston Globe he’d consider hiring the former FBI official. A former federal official familiar with retirement rules told the Washington Post that McCabe’s federal job offers, even if the roles only last a few days, could save his pension benefits. .......

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/de ... 2217ff4c72





Mike Huckabee Celebrates Firing Of Former FBI Deputy Director By Making Dead Dog Joke

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) loves a good joke. Too bad he has never told one. On Saturday, Huckabee tweeted his delight at the news that Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI and 21-year veteran of the agency, had been fired the night before. McCabe would have been able to retire Sunday. “Breaking Wind from CNN!” he wrote. “Andy McCabe offered deal for lying to FBI and won’t get pension but will get passage in overhead bin on United flight to Oakland to work for scofflaw mayor.”

Gov. Mike Huckabee
@GovMikeHuckabee
Breaking Wind from CNN! Andy McCabe offered deal for lying to FBI and won’t get pension but will get passage in overhead bin on United flight to Oakland to work for scofflaw mayor.

4:33 AM - Mar 16, 2018
14.9K
13.5K people are talking about this

Huckabee was referring to a dog that died this week after it was put in the overhead bin of a United Airlines flight. David Huckabee, the former governor’s son, killed a dog while working as a counselor at a Boy Scouts camp in 1998. Funny stuff, right?

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mi ... 3361b0e9e9





Democrats call on Cambridge Analytica head to testify again before Congress

Adam Schiff says Trump campaign may have used ‘illegitimately acquired data’ to help sway election

US congressional investigators want the head of data firm Cambridge Analytica to testify again before their committee, under subpoena if necessary, after a whistleblower claimed the company exploited Facebook and received millions of people’s profiles that were taken without authorisation.

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called for the company to be “thoroughly investigated” and said Facebook must answer questions about how it came to provide private user information to an academic with links to Russia.

Democrats have also called for the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to testify before the Senate judiciary committee about what the social media company knew about the misuse of its data.

Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach
Read more
Cambridge Analytica – owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and formerly headed by sometime Trump adviser Steve Bannon – was suspended pending further information by Facebook on Friday amid the allegation it received personal details from more than 50 million users without their consent.

Whistleblower Christopher Wylie, 28, a former employee who worked with an academic at Cambridge University to obtain the data, told the Observer how it was used to build a software program to predict and influence voters’ choices......

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/m ... e-congress





On Russia, There Are Two Trumps

His team is going hard after Moscow. The president is not.

When it comes to Russia, there is the Trump administration — and there is the president.

The Trump administration denounces Russia for using nerve agent on British soil. President Donald Trump says nothing for days, then calls it “a very sad situation.”

The Trump administration castigates Russia for indiscriminate killing in Syria. Trump says nothing about it.

The Trump administration sanctions Russian hackers for meddling in the 2016 election. Trump muses that it could have been China or “many other people.”

The Trump administration condemns Putin’s unveiling of a new generation of Russian nuclear weapons. Trump remains silent.

Trump’s intelligence community stands by its conclusion that the Kremlin sought to help elect Trump in 2016. Trump insists the Russians actually opposed his election because he’s “a big military person.”

Trump’s national security adviser calls the evidence of Russian interference “incontrovertible.” Trump rebukes him on Twitter the next day.

The Trump administration pushes to harden America’s defenses for the 2018 midterms. Trump won’t even convene a meeting on the subject.

The Trump administration reassures NATO countries that America has their back against Russian intimidation. Trump complains incessantly that they need to pay more for their own defense.

Add it all up, and it amounts to the deepest national security breach between a president and his own advisers in memory — a bizarre disconnect between an administration scrambling to respond to Vladimir Putin’s revanchist assault on the West, and a chief executive who openly admires the Kremlin leader and has yet to allay suspicions that his relationship with Russia was not on the level. It’s the greatest mystery in American politics: What, exactly, explains Donald Trump’s love affair with Moscow?......

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... icy-217649




Report: Kushner Company Repeatedly Falsified Documents on NYC Properties

Jared Kushner’s family real estate company, Kushner Companies, repeatedly filed false claims with New York City authorities in an alleged effort to boost profits, the Associated Press reports. The company, for which Kushner previously served as CEO before he stepped down to join the White House as a senior adviser, apparently sought to avoid offering special protections to low-income tenants. The company told authorities it had no rent-regulated tenants when in fact it had hundreds of such tenants, according to the report. Eighty construction permit applications with false information were reportedly filed between 2013 and 2016. In one case, the company managed to sell three apartment buildings for nearly 50 percent more than it paid for them after claiming to have no rent-regulated tenants on the property. “It’s bare-faced greed,” Aaron Carr, founder of Housing Rights Initiative, told the Associated Press about the allegedly falsified documents. Kushner Cos. issued a statement in response to the allegations saying it outsources such paperwork to third parties and that it would “never deny any tenant their due-process rights.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-ku ... properties





Republicans Are Criticizing Trump For His Attacks On Former FBI Officials And The Russia Investigation

"We are a rule-of-laws nation."

President Trump kept up his barrage of tweets against former leaders of the FBI on Sunday morning — while a chorus of his fellow Republicans sharply criticized him for firing the agency's second-in-command and for his attacks on the special counsel investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Trump attacked fired FBI director James Comey, alleging in a tweet that Comey lied under oath when Sen. Chuck Grassley asked him if he had ever been an anonymous source.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Wow, watch Comey lie under oath to Senator G when asked “have you ever been an anonymous source...or known someone else to be an anonymous source...?” He said strongly “never, no.” He lied as shown clearly on @foxandfriends.

7:02 AM - Mar 18, 2018
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He went on to call memos kept by former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe about his interactions with the president "Fake Memos" and said McCabe made them "to help his own agenda." CNN and the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that special counsel Robert Mueller now has the memos.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?

7:22 AM - Mar 18, 2018
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The president questioned the makeup of the special counsel's investigation, which is being headed up by Mueller, a Republican who served as FBI director for 12 years and who was appointed to that role by George W. Bush.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added...does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!

7:35 AM - Mar 18, 2018
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81.7K people are talking about this

Rep. Trey Gowdy, the chair of the oversight and government reform committee who is not seeking reelection, was asked on Fox News Sunday if senior Republicans would act if Trump and his lawyer, John Dowd, tried to take action against the Mueller investigation. "If you have an innocent client, Mr. Dowd, act like it," he said. Gowdy was largely referring to Dowd's call for the Russia investigation to be shut down in the wake of McCabe's firing on Friday.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, speaking to Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union, said it's “very important [Mueller] is allowed to do his job without interference, and there are many Republicans who share my view.” He said that if Trump tried to fire Mueller, it "would be the beginning of the end of his presidency, because we are a rule-of-laws nation."

Sen. Marco Rubio said McCabe should have been allowed to retire — he was fired less than 48 hours before he was due to retire. “I don’t like the way it went down,” Rubio said on Meet the Press. “I would have certainly done it differently.” He added that he remains "confident that the special counsel is going to conduct a probe that is fair and thorough and is going to arrive at the truth.”

https://www.buzzfeed.com/nidhiprakash/t ... .ti5EDVYLn





Graham calls for Senate Judiciary hearing on McCabe firing

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday said he believes the Senate Judiciary Committee should hold a hearing on the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. “I think we owe it to the average American to have a hearing in the Judiciary Committee where Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions comes forward with whatever documentation he has about the firing, and give Mr. McCabe the chance to defend himself,” Graham, a member of the panel, said on CNN’s “State of the Union." “I believe when it comes to this issue we need as much transparency as possible to make sure it wasn’t politically motivated,” he added.
Sessions on Friday fired McCabe for not being forthcoming with investigators during an inspector general review. President Trump, who has personally attacked McCabe in the past, quickly praised that decision on Twitter, accusing McCabe of corrupt tactics and calling his firing a "great day for Democracy."

http://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk ... abe-firing





Trump: McCabe wrote memos 'to help his own agenda'

President Trump on Sunday said former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote memos about their interactions to further his own agenda. “Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?”

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?

7:22 AM - Mar 18, 2018
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65.4K people are talking about this

The tweet from the president comes after Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that he fired McCabe for leaking to the media and misleading congressional investigators. McCabe, who was the No. 2 official at the FBI, reportedly provided special counsel Robert Mueller’s team with memos describing his contacts with the president. Former FBI Director James Comey, who Trump fired last May, told a Senate panel last year that shortly after he was dismissed, he authorized "a close friend" to leak the contents of a memo to the media in order to prompt a special counsel investigation. "I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter," said Comey. "I didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel."

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... own-agenda





Trump blasts makeup of special counsel’s team

President Trump early Sunday criticized the makeup of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, repeating his claim that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia. “Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary [Clinton] supporters, and Zero Republicans?” he asked in a tweet. “Another Dem recently added...does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!” he added.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added...does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!

7:35 AM - Mar 18, 2018
78.4K
83.4K people are talking about this

Trump has long been critical of the special counsel's investigation into Russian election interference and possible collusion between the his campaign and Moscow, calling it a "witch hunt." On Saturday, Trump tweeted that the Mueller probe should "never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime." He said the probe was based on "fraudulent activities." Trump's personal attorney on Saturday also called on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to shut down Mueller's investigation. Trump's comments come just days after Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, saying he had misled congressional investigators and leaked information to the press. The firing of McCabe ignited a political firestorm in Washington.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... nsels-team





Holder urges Justice Dept, FBI officials to 'be strong' in face of attacks: 'It will get worse'

Former Attorney General Eric Holder (D) urged officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI to "be strong" in the face of attacks. "I said about 8 months ago that the actions and integrity of the men & women at DOJ/FBI would be unfairly questioned. It’s happening," Holder tweeted Sunday. "And it will get worse. Be prepared, be strong. You have the support of millions committed to truth, justice and the defense of this nation."

Eric Holder
@EricHolder
I said about 8 months ago that the actions and integrity of the men & women at DOJ/FBI would be unfairly questioned. It’s happening. And it will get worse. Be prepared, be strong. You have the support of millions committed to truth, justice and the defense of this nation

12:07 PM - Mar 18, 2018
25.3K
9,733 people are talking about this

His comments come after Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, after an internal FBI office found that McCabe wasn't forthcoming during a review by the Justice Department's inspector general. McCabe defended himself after his firing, calling his dismissal an attempt to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's election interference and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. President Trump then sent out a series of tweets attacking McCabe, his former boss and former FBI Director James Comey and Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of the investigation into Russian interference. He also said McCabe's firing proved "there was tremendous leaking, lying and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, Justice & State." McCabe had long been on the receiving end of criticism from congressional Republicans and Trump. Trump touted his firing early Saturday, calling it a "great day for democracy." On Saturday, Trump reiterated his claim that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia.He said the Mueller probe should "never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime." Holder on Saturday ripped the Trump administration for firing McCabe, calling the timing of the dismissal "cruel."

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... in-face-of





It’s Obama’s Economic Recovery, Stupid

Long before he was a presidential candidate, Trump was more than willing to trash the GOP economic policies that he now falsely claims are boosting the economy.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump made a habit of calling the unemployment rate, much like climate change, a hoax. On at least 19 different occasions, candidate Trump insisted the unemployment numbers were cooked. At a media event in September 2015, for instance, Trump bashed the rate, which stood at 5.3 percent, as “such a phony number,” and “the biggest joke there is in this country.” The actual rate, he claimed, fell somewhere between 18 and 32 percent, maybe even 42 percent. As late as December 2016, Trump was calling the jobs numbers “totally fiction.” But all this was while Barack Obama was president. Once Trump was inaugurated, the numbers became real.

After the first jobs report of 2017 was released, which revealed the unemployment rate was continuing its downward trend set under Obama, reporters asked Sean Spicer if Trump still believed the report was phony. “I talked to the president prior to this,” Spicer said, “and he said to quote him very clearly: 'They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.'” Huh?

Trump’s derision of the unemployment rate—like his derision of the press, intelligence community, justice department, and federal judiciary—was typical cynical political maneuvering; in this case, an attempt to puncture Obama’s record on jobs, which was in fact excellent.

During Obama’s presidency,

[the U.S. saw 75 straight months of job growth, the longest streak in American history.]

[Unemployment under Obama plunged from nearly 10 percent in late 2009 to 4.8 percent when he left office.]

[The stock market, too, did extremely well under Obama, as the Dow Jones nearly tripled from 6,800 when he took office to almost 20,000 when he left.]

[(While GDP didn’t grow particularly well under Obama, it remained sluggish in virtually every developed country in the world, indicating significant global factors at play.)]

In addition to Obama’s record-setting jobs streak and tripling of the Dow, consumer confidence and wages were trending upward when he left office. And despite Trump’s relentless boasting about his own “economic revival,”

[the 1.7 million new jobs added in 2017 were surpassed by Obama in "five out of seven years" (excluding 2009, which was before Obama’s policies went into effect)]. All this following the most devastating economic crisis since the Great Depression...............

https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-obama ... d?ref=home

Trump presses GOP to change Senate rules

The Trump administration is putting pressure on Senate Republicans to crack down on Democratic efforts to delay its agenda, fueling talk about the need for rules reform among Republicans on Capitol Hill......

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3788 ... nate-rules





Russian vote problems: Ballot stuffing, coercion, gimmicks

MOSCOW (AP) — Social networks buzzed all day Sunday with videos, photos and firsthand accounts of voting violations in Russia’s presidential election. Election authorities said they will investigate all irregularities and annul results where needed. But the breadth of the reports was striking, and they may cast a shadow on the victory by incumbent Vladimir Putin. Video authenticated by The Associated Press showed some of the apparent irregularities. Some also were reported by observers including representatives of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Golos monitoring group and ordinary Russians. Some examples:

BALLOT-BOX STUFFING:
ASSAULTING OBSERVERS:
FORCED VOTING:
GIMMICKS:

https://www.apnews.com/6500595b888040a4 ... ,-gimmicks





Facebook's marketing VP says the company is 'beyond disturbed' by data scandal

Carolyn Everson, Facebook's vice president of marketing, says that the company is "outraged and beyond disturbed" by the bombshell reports this weekend that firm Cambridge Analytica misused the data of 50 million people.

"If the allegations are true, this is an incredible violation of everything that we stand for," Everson added in response to a question on stage at the ShopTalk retail conference in New York City on Monday.

Everson is the first Facebook exec to take live, in-person questions about the recent allegations that Cambridge Analytica had never deleted improperly obtained user data that it received from a Russian-American researcher in 2015.

The firm told Facebook that it had deleted the data, while reports published by The New York Times and the Guardian this weekend said it did not. Everson reiterated that Facebook is conducting a "deep audit" to "understand what happened."

In the wake of the revelations, media and users have criticized Facebook for being lax about securing user information and for its top executives' lack of leadership in publicly addressing the situation.

The company's chief security officer, Alex Stamos, previously posted a string of tweets about how the incident

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/19/carolyn ... reach.html





Cambridge Analytica boasts of dirty tricks to swing elections

Bosses tell undercover reporters how honey traps, spies and fake news can be used to help clients

The company at the centre of the Facebook data breach boasted of using honey traps, fake news campaigns and operations with ex-spies to swing election campaigns around the world, a new investigation reveals.

Executives from Cambridge Analytica spoke to undercover reporters from Channel 4 News about the dark arts used by the company to help clients, which included entrapping rival candidates in fake bribery stings and hiring prostitutes to seduce them.

In one exchange, the company chief executive, Alexander Nix, is recorded telling reporters: “It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed.”

The Channel 4 News investigation, broadcast on Monday, comes two days after the Observer reported Cambridge Analytica had unauthorised access to tens of millions of Facebook profiles in one of the social media company’s biggest data breaches......

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... -elections





Republicans tell Trump: Lay off Mueller _ but they don’t act

WASHINGTON (AP) — More Republicans are telling President Donald Trump in ever blunter terms to lay off his escalating criticism of special counsel Robert Mueller and the Russia probe. But party leaders are taking no action to protect Mueller, embracing a familiar strategy with the president — simply waiting out the storm.

https://www.apnews.com/04edb1a7205e4e09 ... -don't-act





Trump adds to legal team after attacks on Mueller

President Trump is adding prominent white-collar attorney Joseph diGenova to his personal legal team, the latest sign of an increasingly aggressive stance toward special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

The White House insists that there are no plans to fire Mueller. But Trump’s own tweets and his decision to hire diGenova — a former U.S. attorney who has attacked the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) in conservative media outlets — are the latest signs that the president is moving to discredit Mueller’s probe.

The confrontational posture comes as Mueller’s investigation has reportedly extended to Trump’s personal business empire, and as the White House and the special counsel negotiate the parameters of a potential interview.

“It shows they’re taking this very seriously and recognize that it’s not going away any time soon, and that the stakes are just climbing higher,” said former U.S. Attorney John Wood.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... on-mueller





U.K. To Investigate Cambridge Analytica, Asks Facebook Auditors To Stand Down

“These investigations need to be undertaken by the proper authorities,” said one Parliament member.

British officials asked Facebook on Monday to pull auditors it hired to investigate Cambridge Analytica, the political research firm that was involved in a massive data breach during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In a statement, Facebook said forensic auditors from cybersecurity company Stroz Friedberg were on site at Cambridge Analytica’s London office on Monday evening until they were asked to leave.

“At the request of the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office, which has announced it is pursuing a warrant to conduct its own on-site investigation, the Stroz Friedberg auditors stood down,” Facebook said.

Facebook’s auditors had reportedly entered Cambridge Analytica’s office before British and European Union investigators could investigate.

British Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said Monday that she was requesting a warrant to access Cambridge Analytica’s servers after the firm didn’t cooperate with an investigation into whether it illegally acquired and used Facebook users’ data.

Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, also said the European Union would investigate whether European citizens’ privacy rights had been violated.

Damian Collins, member of Parliament for the Conservative Party, said in a tweet on Monday: “These investigations need to be undertaken by the proper authorities.”

Facebook announced earlier Monday that it had hired Stroz Friedberg ― the same digital forensics firm Uber hired to investigate a dispute over intellectual property ― to audit Cambridge Analytica.

The tech company suspended Cambridge Analytica’s account Friday, saying it had obtained personal information from users three years ago in violation of Facebook policy. Strategic Communication Laboratories, the company that owns Cambridge Analytica, was revealed to have harvested data on 50 million Facebook users, according to investigations by The New York Times and The Observer.

That data reportedly helped fuel Donald Trump’s presidential campaign by building “psychographic profiles” about voters without their knowledge.

Trump’s presidential campaign paid millions of dollars to Cambridge Analytica, funded by billionaire donor Robert Mercer. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon once served on the firm’s board.

In a statement issued Saturday, Cambridge denied any wrongdoing.

Whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge but left the company in 2014, told The Observer that the company “built models to exploit what we knew” about Facebook users to “target their inner demons.”

“They want to fight a culture war in America,” Wylie told the Times, referring to Cambridge’s leadership. “Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/uk ... 49ac7e68cf








Stock market meltdown has to do with a lot more than just Facebook

Bad news for Facebook may have been a catalyst for Monday's market meltdown, but analysts say there are plenty of reasons for selling to continue, not the least of which is an atmosphere of uncertainty being created by the White House.

Fear of a global trade war tops the list of worries sparked by the Trump administration, but analysts also say the personnel shakeups and concern over the ongoing Russia investigation, including whether President Donald Trump will fire the special prosecutor, are also hanging over the market.

On top of that, the economy seems to have lost some oomph. Economists no longer see 3 percent growth forecasts for the current quarter. Recent real estate and retail sales data raise questions about what is going on with the consumer, and there is concern Fed interest rate hikes could slow things down even more.

In the very near term, investors are looking to the Fed for guidance. The Federal Open Market Committee begins a two-day meeting Tuesday and will release new economic and interest rate forecasts Wednesday. The Fed is widely expected to raise rates, but the future course of rate hikes is unclear, and analysts say the reaction in stocks could be negative if the Fed expects more than the three rate hikes it currently forecasts for this year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/19/tech-st ... tdown.html





Supreme Court Won’t Save Pennsylvania’s GOP-Friendly Gerrymander

A new political map, more favorable to Democrats, will remain in place for the 2018 midterms.

The Supreme Court will not intervene in the legal battle over Pennsylvania’s congressional map, allowing the 2018 midterms to take place using a new map more favorable to Democrats. The state supreme court put the new map in place last month after finding that the old one violated the state constitution because it was excessively gerrymandered in favor of Republicans.

Last month, the GOP leaders of the Pennsylvania legislature appealed the case to the US Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to get the new map thrown out. The justices waited nearly a month to announce whether they would weigh in on the case, causing election law experts to wonder if they might indeed take the case. But on Monday, the court released a one-sentence order stating that the Republicans’ appeal to the court had been denied.

The Supreme Court was the final court to weigh in on the matter. A federal district court on Monday also declined to take up the case.

The old map strongly favored Republicans, who consistently won 13 of the state’s 18 congressional seats in a state that is divided almost evenly. The new map will give Democrats more opportunities to win seats in November and could affect who controls the House of Representatives next year.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... rrymander/





‘The first casualty’: NRA broadsides Florida House Speaker for gun control ‘betrayal’

MIAMI — The National Rifle Association accused outgoing Florida House Speaker and likely gubernatorial candidate Richard Corcoran of a “betrayal” on Monday for his role in passing a gun control law for the first time since Republicans won control of the Florida Legislature two decades ago.

“Speaker of the House Richard Corcoran (R) is adding insult to injury by calling the betrayal of law-abiding firearms owners ‘one of the greatest Second Amendment victories we’ve ever had,’” NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer said in a legislative update sent to members and posted on the website of the NRA’s lobbying arm.

“One of the greatest Second Amendment victories we’ve ever had,” she wrote again for emphasis, “NOT !!!!!!”

https://www.politico.com/states/florida ... yal-319476

Last male northern white rhino's death highlights 'huge extinction crisis'

The tragic death of Sudan the rhino should act as a warning of the need to act to prevent mass extinctions around the world, say conservationists

Conservationists have warned that the death of the last male northern white rhinoceros in Kenya is a sign that unsustainable human activity is driving a new era of mass extinctions around the globe.

Sudan, the “gentle giant” who lived in the Ol Pejeta conservancy in Kenya, was put down on Monday after the pain from a degenerative illness became too great.

It leaves only two females - his daughter and granddaughter - through which conservationists hope they might save the species from dying out altogether using IVF.

Colin Butfield, campaigns director at WWF, said the death of a such an emblematic creature was a profound tragedy - and highlighted a wider crisis.

“There is undoubtedly a huge extinction crisis going on of which this death is just a small part,” he said.

Since 1970 average populations of vertebrate animals have more than halved, according to Butfield, and an estimated 10,000 “less celebrated” species are becoming extinct every year.

“It is absolutely huge,” he added.

In Kenya Paula Kahumbu, director of the Wildlife Direct charity, said the news of Sudan’s death had hit people hard.

“The outpouring of grief from Kenyans, especially the younger generation, who woke up to hear that Sudan was dead this morning is a powerful reminder that we must never allow this to happen again.”

Kahumbu said people were “very angry”.”

“We did not do enough to save this majestic species. Now we must stand up and demand action – take action – to prevent the same thing happening to cheetah, elephants, black rhinos, giraffes – we must take ownership of this as Africans and educate people.”

About half a million rhinos roamed in Africa and Asia in 1900. But due to poaching – driven by the trade in Rhino horn – and habitat loss, that figure had fallen to 70,000 by 1970.

Since then the northern white rhino was one of several sub species that has been pushed to the brink of extinction. However Sudan, who was 45, had survived. He had been moved to Dvůr Králové zoo in the Czech Republic in the 1970s before being returning to Africa, where according to those who worked in the Ol Pejeta conservancy, “he stole the heart of many with his dignity and strength”.

“He was a gentle giant, his personality was just amazing and given his size, a lot of people were afraid of him. But there was nothing mean about him,” said Elodie Sampere, a representative for Ol Pejeta.

The veterinary team said they had decided to put Sudan to sleep after his condition worsened over the weekend, leaving him with bad skin wounds. The rhino was unable to stand and was visibly suffering.

“We on Ol Pejeta are all saddened by Sudan’s death,” said Richard Vigne, Ol Pejeta’s chief executive. “He was a great ambassador for his species and will be remembered for the work he did to raise awareness globally of the plight facing not only rhinos, but also the many thousands of other species facing extinction as a result of unsustainable human activity.

“One day, his demise will hopefully be seen as a seminal moment for conservationists worldwide.”

Last night that hope was echoed by Prof Ted Benton from the University of Essex, an environmental social scientist and member of the Red-Green study group.

“The fact that this is in the news suggests there is a wider cultural feeling of regret and care about this from so many people who have never seen – and probably never expect to see – a white rhino, and that is heartening in that it shows that people care.

But he said the death was part of a “much wider and deeper issue” – the huge loss of other species.

“Through the current economic system and globalisation we are taking up more of the earth’s resources and living space than it can accommodate. This is not just a threat to other species this is a threat directly to our survival as humans too.”

Butfield said the growing recognition that we are living through an extinction crisis did offer some hope.

“We are aware of it, we know what causes it and to some extent we know what the solutions are. Now it is a matter of acting on that knowledge before it is too late.”

In Kenya Kahumbu said people were ready to fight.

“For too long conservation has been seen here a something white people do but now the young generation feel very strongly that this is for us to deal with. We need to take ownership of this issue as Africans and to make sure we act before it is too late.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ion-crisis

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